VE-ADR – Bridging the Communications Gap

Florida (4/20/2011) – I was in a meeting today and what popped in my head was that famous quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke “What we’ve got here is, failure to communicate”. Time and again, we have a failure to communicate in the CD and construction claim/litigation arena. While this failure to communicate does not always occur, more often than not, it does occur. The systemic failure begins when a plaintiff counsel fails to accurately and fairly present a claim that meets the realistic needs of the property owner. The communication failure continues when the defense does not fully and fairly address the plaintiff issues, points fingers at home owner maintenance and subcontractors, etc. and may not want to take any responsibility for decisions it may have made during the design and construction phases of the project. Then the communication failure once again continues when subcontractors fail to properly address their potential exposure or refuse to accept responsibility for their share of the issues. Fortunately, we have been observing plaintiffs, defense, x-defendants and carriers that are willing to look in new directions for ideas to help get cases/claims resolved sooner than later, spend less money to get to resolution, and be comfortable with a “fair” approach. And there is good reason why this is the case. That is because the current “system” that addresses the majority of CD cases is not an sustainable business model. We have all observed the cracks developing within the infrastructure of the CD industry over the last 10 years. And similar to all “maturing” industries such as manufacturing and health care, if we do not provide sufficient thought and creative energy to help make this process become more efficient and fair, new models will be imposed upon us by the folks paying the bills, the legislatures drawing up the laws and the judiciary interpreting those laws. Similar issues have been addressed in many industries that we are all familiar with. And in those business sectors, where failure to adapt and innovate has been the standard, economic pain and process failure have been one result. So I applaud all those in our industry that have and will continue to innovate and develop new resolution models. And while all of them are not successful, we learn from those experiences and put forth more energy and creativity to push again. To that end, Lima Solutions has introduced a model for resolution that is working now, and can expand into a model for claim/case resolution across the country. We call our model “Value Engineered ADR” and is a project management based solution that works! VE-ADR is a fully customizable process that is adaptable to any size claim, anywhere in the US, and can handle any number of parties. We look forward to hearing from you about your interest in our program.